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Exploring experimental Medicine in the modern world and its greater effects on a populous.

Introduction For the purpose of this paper the definition of experimental medicine is as follows;” is a medicinal product that has not yet received approval from governmental regulatory authorities for routine use in human or veterinary medicine.” From here it can be pondered,” What effects can experimental medicine have on a modern society and its individuals?” This essay will prove that experimental medicine has produced a more pessimistic and altogether less constructive society.

The populous this will be the focus of this study is the American population from the late 1860s to today’s time. The discussion will center around the topic of experimental medicine throughout history. This will include everything as far back as the mid to late 1800s. This will give time for looking at some of the best and worst applications of “medicinal” drugs.

Body 1 The first effect that experimental medicine has had on the American people is that it has further separated the people from the government. Two reasons for this are the Tuskegee Experiment and Project MKUltra. Both of these were tests that involved using experimental drugs on the American people.

The first of these was the Tuskegee Experiment. It was originally known as the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The CDC has a detailed timeline of events that transpired during the entire study “In 1932, the USPHS, working with the Tuskegee Institute, began a study to record the natural history of syphilis. It was originally called the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” (now referred to as the “USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee”). The study initially involved 600 Black men – 399 with syphilis, 201 who did not have the disease. Participants’ informed consent was not collected. Researchers told the men they were being treated for “bad blood,” a local term used to describe several ailments, including syphilis, anemia, and fatigue. In exchange for taking part in the study, the men received free medical exams, free meals, and burial insurance.”

The Second was Project MKUltra. This was a top-secret project of the CIA during the cold war era. The aim was to find a way to control human behavior with drugs or other psychological manipulators. Of course, this is now known as an attempt at mind control. This study was conducted on over 150 young Americans at the time. Not all of them knew they were participating in a CIA study.

The History Channel puts it very well. “MK-Ultra was a top-secret CIA project in which the agency conducted hundreds of clandestine experiments—sometimes on unwitting U.S. citizens—to assess the potential use of LSD and other drugs for mind control, information gathering and psychological torture. Though Project MK-Ultra lasted from 1953 until about 1973, details of the illicit program didn’t become public until 1975, during a congressional investigation into widespread illegal CIA activities within the United States and around the world.”

Not only were both of these projects put on by the government and out of the public eye, but they were both using untested medical procedures in an attempt to further the federal governments control on the American populous. The fallout from these events have been catastrophic for the American society as a whole. Both government organizations have lost at least three lawsuits against them for these studies. These are two of the worst of the worst examples of experimental medicine.

Now, what effects did these actions have on the societies they were used on? That answer is a little harder to pin down. The effected young Americans and their parents were forever changed, but the best example of the pain inflicted actually comes from the media surrounding this topic today.

The Netflix docudrama, “Manhunt: Unabomber”, focuses on the Unabomber and the horrible atrocities he committed. Now this may not sound like a show that should have anything to do with medicine. But there is a considerable amount of evidence to support the claim that the Unabomber was a product of the experiments of MkUltra. The Atlantic had this to say about in June of 2000, “From the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962, Harvard psychologists, led by Henry A. Murray, conducted a disturbing and what would now be seen as ethically indefensible experiment on twenty-two undergraduates. To preserve the anonymity of these student guinea pigs, experimenters referred to individuals by code name only. One of these students, whom they dubbed “Lawful,” was Theodore John Kaczynski, who would one day be known as the Unabomber, and who would later mail or deliver sixteen package bombs to scientists, academicians, and others over seventeen years, killing three people and injuring twenty-three.” This, connected with the other patients tells the story of widespread mismanagement of misunderstood medicinal drugs.

Body 2 Now that some of the worst handled cases of experimental medicine have been covered, it’s time for some of the best examples of experimental medicine. The medicines and the relative impacts that will be covered are penicillins, and a more topical ivermectin.

Penicillin’s been around for a while, but it is still one of the most common ingredients in your typical over the counter antibiotics. The American chemistry society had this to say,” Fleming found that his "mold juice" was capable of killing a wide range of harmful bacteria, such as streptococcus, meningococcus and the diphtheria bacillus. He then set his assistants, Stuart Craddock and Frederick Ridley, the difficult task of isolating pure penicillin from the mold juice. It proved to be very unstable, and they were only able to prepare solutions of crude material to work with. Fleming published his findings in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology in June 1929, with only a passing reference to penicillin's potential therapeutic benefits.” And then when it finally started to take off,” Orville May, Director of the NRRL, agreed to have the Laboratory undertake a vigorous program to increase penicillin yields under the direction of Robert Coghill, Chief of the Fermentation Division. It was agreed that Heatley would remain in Peoria to share his expertise with his American colleagues. Within a few weeks, Andrew Moyer found that he could significantly increase the yield of penicillin by substituting lactose for the sucrose used by the Oxford team in their culture medium. Shortly thereafter, Moyer made the even more important discovery that the addition of corn-steep liquor to the fermentation medium produced a ten-fold increase in yield. Corn-steep liquor was a by-product of the corn wet-milling process, and the NRRL, in an attempt to find a use for it, tried it in essentially all of its fermentation work. Later, the Peoria laboratory increased the yield of penicillin still further by the addition of penicillin precursors, such as phenylacetic acid, to the fermentation medium.”

	When the Peoria lab proved that penicillin was a viable antibiotic, the US government decided that this was a science worthy of its support. From there the big pharmaceutical companies of the day took over the research and due to the industrial boom fueled by the second world war, these larger companies put their vast amounts of resources into researching this drug to help the war effort. The massive efforts by the West’s drive to make this drug a viable solution made,” The steps of fermentation, recovery and purification and packaging quickly yielded to the cooperative efforts of the chemical scientists and engineers working on pilot production of penicillin. On March 1, 1944, Pfizer opened the first commercial plant for large-scale production of penicillin by submerged culture in Brooklyn, New York. Meanwhile, clinical studies in the military and civilian sectors were confirming the therapeutic promise of penicillin. The drug was shown to be effective in the treatment of a wide variety of infections, including streptococcal, staphylococcal and gonococcal infections. The United States Army established the value of penicillin in the treatment of surgical and wound infections. Clinical studies also demonstrated its effectiveness against syphilis, and by 1944, it was the primary treatment for this disease in the armed forces of Britain and the United States.”

And that brings us back to today when Penicillin is used as a basis for most modern therapeutic and antibiotic needs. Over the years penicillin has lost most of its media attention, recently a study was done by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. This study was focusing on the epidemiology surrounding penicillin. It concluded that,” Approximately 10% of patients report an allergy to penicillin however up to 90% of these patients do not have a true allergy. The incidence of anaphylaxis to penicillin is 0.02% to 0.04% and is mediated by a type 1 hypersensitivity reaction.” This shows a mostly positive reaction to Penicillin in the modern day.

This last medicine is an antiparasitic. Ivermectin according to the National center for Biotechnological Information is “a member of the large-spectrum macrocyclic lactone antiparasitic group with a multiple mechanism of action and practically no side-effects to the host animal, when used at its therapeutic dose. The drug was developed 50 years ago and is recommended to control parasitic infestations in animals and humans (i.e. ascariasis, river blindness and lymphatic filariasis).” Now with that brief explanation of ivermectin out of the way, we can get to the meat of the public understanding of ivermectin. The CDC claims that ivermectin should not be used for the prevention or treatment of Covid. Their reasoning is that ivermectin should not be used against covid because it causes a whole slew of harmful side-effects. They range from a minor rash, some stomach pain, mild nausea, to severe seizures and legit Hepatitis. Alongside many other areas, Memphis and the Shelby County area sided with the CDC on this decision.

According to the NCBI, ivermectin is being used to treat covid around the world, but specifically, In Brazil and in most of Latin American (LATAM) and Caribbean countries, IVM has been prescribed and widely used for the preventive treatment of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) immediately after the publication of its in vitro effect against the virus. In the early stages of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) people were also bombarded by the false promises, such as the immunological and antiviral protection of IVM. Most of the treatment decisions did not follow any medical, pharmacological or epidemiological recommendations and the medical community took the one-size-fits-all attitude based on the fact that the drug was affordable and exceptionally safe.” This is the decision many other countries have made.

Around the same time JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association, network was also doing a study around the same time on Ivermectin, but they concluded that ivermectin and its symptoms weren’t enough to not encourage people to take ivermectin as a response to covid-19. Here are some of the results and the network’s conclusion.

“Results- Among 490 patients included in the primary analysis (mean [SD] age, 62.5 [8.7] years; 267 women [54.5%]), 52 of 241 patients (21.6%) in the ivermectin group and 43 of 249 patients (17.3%) in the control group progressed to severe disease (relative risk [RR], 1.25; 95% CI, 0.87-1.80; P = .25). For all prespecified secondary outcomes, there were no significant differences between groups. Mechanical ventilation occurred in 4 (1.7%) vs 10 (4.0%) (RR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.13-1.30; P = .17), intensive care unit admission in 6 (2.4%) vs 8 (3.2%) (RR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.27-2.20; P = .79), and 28-day in-hospital death in 3 (1.2%) vs 10 (4.0%) (RR, 0.31; 95% CI, 0.09-1.11; P = .09). The most common adverse event reported was diarrhea (14 [5.8%] in the ivermectin group and 4 [1.6%] in the control group).”

“Conclusion- In this randomized clinical trial of high-risk patients with mild to moderate COVID-19, ivermectin treatment during early illness did not prevent progression to severe disease. The study findings do not support the use of ivermectin for patients with COVID-19.”

These findings have caused a lot of confusion as people are trying to decide what is actually an effective way to combat Covid-19 and all its variants. Just from the people I’ve talked to I’ve gotten varying answers. Doctors and nurses do not advise the use of ivermectin because there are other options such as the monoclonal antibodies, or the vaccines themselves. Then other college students stand opposed to both the monoclonal antibodies and the ivermectin. And I’ve heard from some older adults that they’ve seen ivermectin work, but not on delta and omicron. Either way, the fact is that everyone’s answers have holes in them. As a society, contradicting information is generally harmful to decision making.

Going back to the original question; What effects can experimental medicine have on a modern society and its individuals? This was considered from many different points of view, and it can be concluded that medical testing has a very wide variety of outcomes when talking about such a large populous as the United States of America.

ENGL 1020- Research Paper Bibliography

1- “Alexander Fleming Discovery and Development of Penicillin - Landmark.” American Chemical Society, https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html. 2- “Anti-SARS-Cov-2 Monoclonal Antibodies.” National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/anti-sars-cov-2-antibody-products/anti-sars-cov-2-monoclonal-antibodies/. 3- Care, Baptist Health. “ECMO Is a Treatment That Provides Short to Long-Term Support for Patients with Severe Conditions of the Heart and Lungs.” Baptist Health Care | EBaptistHealthCare.org, https://www.ebaptisthealthcare.org/articles/ecmo-saves-lives. 4- Covid-19 Vaccinations and Allergies FAQ - BSACI. https://www.bsaci.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/v3Jan-2021-COVID19-Vaccines-and-Allergy-FAQ.pdf. 5- “Findlaw's United States Supreme Court Case and Opinions.” Findlaw, https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/471/159.html. 6- Gross, Terry. “The CIA's Secret Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'.” NPR, NPR, 9 Sept. 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-quest-for-mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief. 7- “History of Medicine.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/science/history-of-medicine. 8- History.com Editors. “MK-Ultra.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 16 June 2017, https://www.history.com/topics/us-government/history-of-mk-ultra. 9- Kardos, Nelson, and Arnold L. Demain. “Penicillin: The Medicine with the Greatest Impact on Therapeutic Outcomes - Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology.” SpringerLink, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2 Oct. 2011, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00253-011-3587-6. 10- Molento, Marcelo Beltrão. “Ivermectin against COVID-19: The Unprecedented Consequences in Latin America.” One Health (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Elsevier, Dec. 2021, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8050401/. 11- Shephard, Michelle. “Brainwashed: The Echoes of MK Ultra.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 21 Oct. 2020, https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/brainwashed-mkultra. 12- Shephard, Michelle. “Brainwashed: The Echoes of MK Ultra.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 21 Oct. 2020, https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/brainwashed-mkultra. 13- “Tuskegee Study - Timeline - CDC - NCHHSTP.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 22 Apr. 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm.